International Workers’ Day on 1 May is often presented as commemoration – banners, speeches, and a polite nod to the struggles of the past. But it is not a museum piece. It is a living tradition rooted in sacrifice, solidarity, and the belief that work must carry dignity as well as necessity.
And nowhere understands that continuity more deeply than the North East of England.
Haymarket: when work became a political force
International Workers’ Day originates in the labour movement of the late 19th century, particularly in the United States.
On 1 May 1886, hundreds of thousands of workers struck for an eight-hour working day. In Chicago, the centre of the movement, the demand was simple but profound: that life should not be consumed entirely by labour.
Days later came the Haymarket Affair on 4 May 1886. A peaceful rally in Haymarket Square turned violent after a bomb was thrown into police ranks. Officers and civilians were killed. In the aftermath, eight anarchist labour activists were arrested; four were executed in 1887.
Whatever the complexity of that moment, its legacy became clear: organised labour had become a political force that would shape the modern world.
In 1889, the Second International declared 1 May as International Workers’ Day — not celebration, but solidarity.
In Britain: rights were not given, they were taken
In Britain, workers’ rights did not emerge gently.
There was Peterloo in 1819, where cavalry charged reforming crowds in Manchester. There was the Chartist movement, demanding universal suffrage. There were decades in which trade unions were illegal or heavily restricted.
The Trades Union Congress (TUC), founded in 1868, and the Labour Party, formed in 1900, gave structure and political expression to a long industrial struggle.
International Workers’ Day sits within that wider story: rights won through pressure, organisation, and persistence – never simply granted.
The North East: where Labour shaped identity itself
Nowhere is this history more deeply embedded than the North East.
Coal mining, shipbuilding, engineering, and rail were not simply industries. They were ways of life that shaped entire communities.
The Durham Miners’ Association, founded in 1869, became one of the most powerful trade union organisations in Europe. Its legacy lives on most visibly through the Durham Miners’ Gala – “the Big Meeting”.
The Durham Gala is, arguably, one of the greatest mass gatherings in the world dedicated to workers: a day to celebrate, remember, and embrace collective identity forged through labour, struggle, and belonging. It is not simply commemorative. It is alive – a continuing expression of solidarity across generations.
With banners carried from former pit villages, brass bands leading delegations into Durham City, and tens of thousands gathering in shared purpose, the Gala represents something increasingly rare in modern public life: collective identity expressed openly, joyfully, and without apology.
It is celebration. It is memory. It is continuity.
Jarrow: dignity on the road to London
In 1936, the Jarrow March became a defining moment of industrial Britain.
Two hundred unemployed men walked to London after the closure of Palmer’s shipyard devastated their town. Their march, supported politically by Ellen Wilkinson, was a refusal to accept economic erasure.
They were heard politely. They were received respectfully. But structural change did not follow.
The lesson remains: communities can be dismantled economically while political response lags behind lived reality.
The miners’ strike: the end of one settlement, the beginning of another
The 1984-85 miners’ strike, led by Arthur Scargill of the National Union of Mineworkers, marked a turning point in British industrial life.
In the North East, it was experienced in places like Easington, Wearmouth, and Vane Tempest – communities where mining had defined identity for generations.
Whatever interpretation is placed on the dispute, its consequence is clear: it marked the end of the post-war industrial settlement that had shaped working life across the region.
What followed was fragmentation rather than replacement.
The workers’ movement today: still defending public life
It is often assumed that trade unions belong to the past. In reality, they remain central to the present – particularly in public services.
The National Education Union (NEU) has become a leading voice in disputes over pay, workload, staffing levels, and school funding – arguing that education quality cannot be separated from the conditions of those who deliver it.
In healthcare, the British Medical Association (BMA) and other doctors’ unions have taken a more visible industrial role, focusing not only on pay, but on patient safety and the long-term sustainability of the NHS workforce.
And in local government, disputes such as the Birmingham bin strike, involving Unite members, have highlighted the continued reliance of essential services on organised labour – and the consequences when negotiation breaks down.
These disputes are not simply about disruption. They are about whether essential services remain viable, safe, and properly resourced.
Public protest and the law: a changing landscape
Alongside these disputes, the legal framework surrounding protest in the UK has become more restrictive in recent years.
The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023 introduced a range of new powers, including offences related to “locking on”, disruption of key infrastructure, and expanded police powers to impose conditions on protests where “serious disruption” is judged likely.
The 2023 Act also created new preventative orders allowing courts to restrict individuals’ ability to participate in protests in certain circumstances.
Supporters of these measures argue they are necessary to prevent disproportionate disruption to public services and infrastructure. Critics, including human rights organisations, have raised concerns that the thresholds for intervention are broad and risk capturing peaceful protest activity within criminal enforcement frameworks.
This tension sits at the heart of a longstanding democratic question: how far should the state go in managing protest, and at what point does regulation begin to reshape the right itself?
Because mass demonstration has never been an optional extra in democratic life. It has been one of its most visible and effective mechanisms for change.
From Peterloo to the suffragettes, from miners’ marches to civil rights movements, public assembly has repeatedly been the moment when unheard voices become unavoidable.
Why international workers’ day still matters
International Workers’ Day endures because the underlying questions have not been resolved.
Work today is different, but the pressures are familiar:
• insecure contracts replacing stable employment
• fragmented labour replacing collective bargaining
• regional inequality shaping life chances
• public services stretched under long-term pressure
In the North East, these tensions are particularly visible. New sectors — offshore wind, advanced manufacturing, digital and green industries — are growing, but the question remains whether value, control, and opportunity are retained locally.
The central question remains unchanged from 1886:
who captures the value of work, and where does it stay?
A tradition worth protecting
International Workers’ Day is often treated as remembrance. But in truth, it is something more active: a reminder that collective organisation remains one of the most important forces in shaping working life.
In the North East, that tradition is not abstract. It is visible in the Durham Miners’ Gala – one of the greatest gatherings in the world dedicated to workers – a day to celebrate, remember, and embrace collective identity forged through labour, struggle, and belonging.
It is a reminder that democracy is not only exercised through institutions, but through people assembling in public space to be seen, heard, and counted.
And in that sense, International Workers’ Day is not about the past.
It is about the ongoing right to gather, to speak, and to shape the conditions under which we live and work.
Not as disruption.
But as democracy in motion.
